Time To Reclaim The Constitution, Say Activists At National Women's Meet

“Don’t become the voice of the voiceless, pass on the mic,” said transgender activist Rachna Mudraboyina at the National Women’s Convention.

As the voices of women and marginal communities become prominent in the country, the time for them to reclaim their right on the Constitution has come. For long, marginalized communities have suffered discrimination in terms of caste, creed, community, area, gender etc. But in the past few years, with protests and conventions initiated by women farmers, Dalits, LGBTQ community etc., they have established the point that they will not let their right to freedom, equality and expression be demolished.

The convention gave space to feminists, thinkers, activists and farmer collectives to raise several issues from violence, injustice to privatization of higher education. They unanimously stressed on how the solution lies in representation of these women in parliament and in decision-making. Jagmati Sangwan spoke about how there is a need to gather support and build unity to create pressure over state authorities to fight discrimination and get justice.

“There is a large chunk of population which does not get basic rights written in our constitution, so in order to fight for our rights, we need to keep our voices strong. We have Dalits, Adivasis, women and a big population of poor people living in our society who don’t even have basic human rights and to stand by them, we need to force the government and the other political parties to take up our issues in the parliament,” she added.

Sangwan has been fighting prejudices and discrimination in Haryana, a state notorious for honour killings, skewed sex ratio and violence against women. She recently contested Mayoral polls in the state.

Mudraboyina, who runs a Youtube channel called TransVision and shoots videos spreading awareness around the transgender community, spoke up on the atrocities transgender people face on an everyday basis and how the government wants to regulate their identity through the Trans Bill and other laws. “The amendments that were made in the law against sexual violence against women does not anywhere talk about rampant rape happening with transgenders in the country. The government does not even consider the atrocities against us in laws and that is why representation of transgenders in policy-making is a must,” she said.

She also pointed out how when a transgender person, Chandramukhi Muvvala, stood in elections last year, she was kidnapped and only when her group filed a Hebeas Corpus petition in the court was she released.

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The caste system that we devised left an unequal pattern in the treatment of humans where some are more powerful than the others. Even today we practise untouchability in our middle-class homes. We don’t have to go far to look for instances of it but in the very urban homes, where we won’t let Dalits enter our kitchen but let them clean our toilets

Noted Dalit rights activist Ruth Manorama said that she has intersectionally and inter-sectorally looked at the issues of class, caste and gender. “The caste system that we devised left an unequal pattern in the treatment of humans where some are more powerful than the others. Even today we practise untouchability in our middle-class homes. We don’t have to go far to look for instances of it but in the very urban homes, where we won’t let Dalits enter our kitchen but let them clean our toilets. Even today adivasis continue to be slaves in many areas. This needs to stop.”

Prof Uma Chakravarthy, well known scholar and feminist thinker, emphasised that “what makes the movement for reclaiming the Constitution compelling and urgent is the unprecedented escalation of violence that we are witnessing against women and girls, exacerbated by caste-based violence and the complete denial of and alienation from the right to land, dignity and autonomy.”

Many well-known feminists, women’s rights thinkers, academicians, political leaders and experts such as Dr Syeda Hameed, Kavita Srivastava, Anjali Bharadwaj, Annie Raja, Kalyani Menon Sen, Nivedita Menon, Dr. Jayati Ghosh, Lara Jesani; political leaders such as Brinda Karat and Sushmita Dey and grassroots activists such as Soni Sori, Angela Rangad from Shillong, Richa Singh and Dayamani Barla participated in the convention to demand equal rights for all.

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